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Another Language Thread
Aerek
East Tennessee, USA
If I were a gambling man, I'd bet that this idea probably deals with legacy code so archaic that it's up there with the weather code on the list of "Shit we wouldn't touch with an NSA cryptoanalyst team," but here we go anyway:
Let me first establish that I *like* language learning's soft-cap, and that you have to choose your lessons carefully. That makes language fluency special, while still giving long-term goals because you technically *could*, with enough time, effort, and money, speak *all* the languages. I like that, and this idea is not to try and change anything about that.
What I don't like, and what I think leaves a bad taste in the mouth of a lot of folks who have complained about languages over the years, is that language learning is prohibitively expensive in part because perfect fluency is required for any reasonable use. This makes language learning an all-or-nothing affair, learning to speak a "broken" dialect, or being half fluent, is simply not an option because of how the random word substitution works. A lot of us probably have some half-finished languages lying around that we'll never complete, and those represent wasted investments because the first 20 lessons or so are useless to us unless/until we take it all the way to the end, because we simply cannot understand or be understood until that point.
I won't pretend to know the underlying mechanics, but the game seems to makes a random dice roll on what words you say/hear correctly the first time you hear or say them, and then remembers that same combination of words for some length of time, so even if you're half fluent in a language, saying the same thing 5 times comes out like:
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Even though this example was actually a fairly lucky dice roll at half fluency, (66% correct) it's still impossible to actually know what you heard correctly and what you didn't, so almost nigh impossible to suss out what someone's trying to say, and asking them to repeat themselves doesn't help at all.
What I'd like to see is the random word substitution replaced with the same mechanics we see in MUTTER, where letters and words are randomly replaced with periods, and those periods will actually shift around if the phrase is repeated, like so:
Aerek mutters, "The quick br... fox jump. .ver t.. la.. ...."
Aerek mutters, "... quick brown ..x ....s ...r ..e l... .og."
Aerek mutters, "... qu... .ro.. fox jumps o... .he l... dog."
Aerek mutters, "The quick ..... fox ....s .v.. the lazy do.."
Aerek mutters, "Th. ..... bro.. ... .umps over the l... ..g."
This does three things:
Let me first establish that I *like* language learning's soft-cap, and that you have to choose your lessons carefully. That makes language fluency special, while still giving long-term goals because you technically *could*, with enough time, effort, and money, speak *all* the languages. I like that, and this idea is not to try and change anything about that.
What I don't like, and what I think leaves a bad taste in the mouth of a lot of folks who have complained about languages over the years, is that language learning is prohibitively expensive in part because perfect fluency is required for any reasonable use. This makes language learning an all-or-nothing affair, learning to speak a "broken" dialect, or being half fluent, is simply not an option because of how the random word substitution works. A lot of us probably have some half-finished languages lying around that we'll never complete, and those represent wasted investments because the first 20 lessons or so are useless to us unless/until we take it all the way to the end, because we simply cannot understand or be understood until that point.
I won't pretend to know the underlying mechanics, but the game seems to makes a random dice roll on what words you say/hear correctly the first time you hear or say them, and then remembers that same combination of words for some length of time, so even if you're half fluent in a language, saying the same thing 5 times comes out like:
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown beezior mainly over the lazy destruction."
Even though this example was actually a fairly lucky dice roll at half fluency, (66% correct) it's still impossible to actually know what you heard correctly and what you didn't, so almost nigh impossible to suss out what someone's trying to say, and asking them to repeat themselves doesn't help at all.
What I'd like to see is the random word substitution replaced with the same mechanics we see in MUTTER, where letters and words are randomly replaced with periods, and those periods will actually shift around if the phrase is repeated, like so:
Aerek mutters, "The quick br... fox jump. .ver t.. la.. ...."
Aerek mutters, "... quick brown ..x ....s ...r ..e l... .og."
Aerek mutters, "... qu... .ro.. fox jumps o... .he l... dog."
Aerek mutters, "The quick ..... fox ....s .v.. the lazy do.."
Aerek mutters, "Th. ..... bro.. ... .umps over the l... ..g."
This does three things:
- Makes it obvious what you heard correctly and what you didn't, which would allow you to pick up correct context and make informed guesses as to what you're hearing.
- Would actually allow someone to repeat themselves to help you understand, which I find to be more realistic and desirable than getting screwed by an unlucky, one-time vocabulary roll.
- Makes individual language lessons more valuable, as 50%-75% fluency would actually be reasonable to speak a "broken" dialect. (Provided the period substitution rate was weighted per language lesson.)
-- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.
14
Comments
If a rework was to be done, it would be nice to see fluency tied to actual vocabulary. I have no idea how they would do that, but something that makes it so if, in your example, your Mhunish is at the point where you translate "dog" as "destruction", it stays that way anytime you say it. So, if you were to talk about that dog that followed you around as a child, it would be "that destruction that followed...". Alternatively, use the mutter mechanic you were describing, except don't randomize it. Have the words that would be wrong (like "destruction" for "dog") replaced with periods.
Aerek tells you in Mhun, "The quick brown .... ..... the lazy ...."
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
They're magic/code, not really a language. After all, if you leave a city, you suddenly lose all ability to speak the language.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
@Sarathai if you switch race you magically lose access to that language too.
Languages are weird. It would be nice to see them reworked somehow, but I'm not sure this sort of fix is worth the time it would take. Replacing the garbled words with something like ... would be nice though for a start.
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
That's honestly not realistic at all. In real life, I took a semester of "conversational" German. I probably know 1% or less of the language's vocabulary, but I learned basic syntax, basic conjugation, and basic verbs and nouns, so I could communicate with fluent German speakers if my life depended on it. In game, my vocabulary is completely randomized, so even at half fluency, I effectively know 0% Mhun on a bad day, even if I was trying to communicate a "basic" thought. In real life, learning a new vocabulary word doesn't cost us $27,000. I would talk about my "destruction" that followed me around as a child, and you would say, "You mean your dog?" and bam, I learn a new word for free. So we have to strike a balance between realism and practicality here. This is a game, and half learned languages represent between 39,000-351,000gp investments for people who know a few, and so the language system should allow for half-learned languages to be useful in some measure, "realistic" or not.
My take on it is that in real life, if you're fluent and I'm half-fluent in a language, and I say something 5 different times in 5 hypothetically different ways, you'll probably be able to figure what I'm trying to say, and vice versa. In real life, this process would involve tortured syntax, mispronunciation, pantomime, finding synonyms, non-verbal cues, listener feedback and correction, and so forth. In a video game, we can't implement all that, so the MUTTER-style randomization is the most practical approximation of this communication process.
City languages are a non-issue, because they only exist in terms of perfect or zero fluency. If you're referring to the fact that they still take the form of random words in tells, that should likely just become "unintelligible" a la SAYS. The fact that it isn't already that way is probably just an oversight.
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
We should remember the racial languages for every race we've ever been. Gem owners would get all racial languages for free. Instead of thousands of gold, language lessons should cost 1 sandwich per lesson, because these tutors work so little, they're probably happy just to eat.
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
Another option: always blank out words that are a certain length.
This is kind of like real learning, since your vocabulary words get a little bit longer each year through school. Some additional obfuscation could be added (hehe, obfuscation) to occasionally cause your 4-letter word to be misheard or hidden even though you've passed the threshold for 4.
You'd have to 'tone down' your language to meet your level. Or ask someone who is fluent in the language to repeat something... only with more basic phrasing. Which makes a hell of a lot of sense if you're only semi-fluent in a language.
"Do you know how to get to that city in the east?"
Instead of
"Can you help me with directions to Targossas?"
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
"Can you help me with dir ect ions to Targ oss as?
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
Again, picture the understanding-by-repetition of muttering as ultimately symbolic. In game terms, yes, I'm saying the same exact thing 5 times and you're hearing different pieces of it until you get it. But in real life terms, I'd be expressing the same thought in 5 different ways, searching for different words, pantomiming different actions, taking in listener feedback, until finally I get my point across. The muttering mechanic serves as an abstract representation of cross-language communication, not something to be taken literally.
If you're pantomiming different actions, why aren't you emoting?
It seems that if you were going to go through the trouble of repeating yourself three, four, five, or more times to convey your point, presuming it's some kind of abstract for the above, you might as well use the above.
If the mutter mechanic was used as it is, then the same kind of abuse that could happen with the example Sarapis gave could easily happen as I previously described (just saying the same thing five times or whatever). The issue is that if you aren't fluent (or close to it) you're not always going to be able to convey your meaning effectively. With the mechanic you wish to use, you could, with a few tries, always convey your meaning. No amount of pantomiming, searching for words, taking in feedback, etc is going to allow you to convey certain (typically complex/abstract) thoughts when you are well below fluency.
I'm not opposed to a new system for language (I'm at the point where continued learning will cost millions of gold to reach fluency), one which better valuates incremental investment/learning, I just don't think the way you're describing is the way to do it.
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.
The latter doesn't use the language system. I could just EMOTE says in Mhun, "Which way to Targossas?" if I so desired. Or I could spend 10 minutes crafting custom emotes to pretend to fail to communicate through a language I've learned 50% of. This might be great RP, but it doesn't allow reasonable use of the 13 lessons I've learned in the language. (Which were expensive)
I just want to be able to use half-fluent languages. I don't think that's unreasonable, given their cost. You're trying to add inconvenience to the language system, I'm trying to add convenience. You trying to maintain a system where we can't reasonably communicate at half fluency, I'm trying to make it so we can. We appear to be working toward different goals.
This could just be me, but I think the primary purpose of languages is for privacy. Generally, I use other languages when there are some in the room I want to understand me, and some in the room I don't; I don't speak other languages just for the sake of them. Thus, needing to switch to Achaean to be understood, or using EMOTES to be understood, is exactly what I'm trying to get away from, but at the same time, being able to chop up my words to be 100% understood in a language I haven't fully learned massively de-values the need for perfect fluency, which isn't fair or desirable.
Honourable, knight eternal,
Darkly evil, cruel infernal.
Necromanctic to the core,Dance with death forever more.